Qualifying Report: Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS May 8, 2015—Jack Hawksworth qualified 11th in the No. 41 ABC Supply Honda for the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The quickest of the Honda-powered contingent, Hawksworth posted his best qualifying run of the season with a time of 1 minute, 10.4558 seconds (124.623mph).

“It was a solid qualifying run,” said Hawksworth, whose best start of eighth came at New Orleans when the grid was set by entrants’ points. “We ran pretty clean. The car was pretty good especially in the first round, it didn’t feel quite as good in the second round for whatever reason but we’ll have a look through stuff tonight. We just have to keep on getting better and hopefully tomorrowwe can have a good day.”

Takuma Sato, who was among the quickest Hondas in the practice sessions, was on his hot lap in qualifying when Justin Wilson came out of the pits and into the racing line, forcing Sato to lift and lose speed.  His lap of 1 minute, 10.7391 seconds (124.124 mph) put his No. 14 ABC Supply Honda 22nd on the grid.

“It didn’t work out like we wanted in qualifying,” a frustrated Sato said afterwards. “There was a slow car in front of me as I was on my qualifying lap which was unfortunate, and then on the second lap, the tires weren’t as fresh and we didn’t get the speed we wanted. It’s disappointing but hopefully we can make the car faster for tomorrow’s run.”

Will Power won the Verizon P1 Award with his record-breaking run of 1 minute, 9.4886 seconds (126.357mph) for the 38th pole of his career. Scott Dixon, Helio Castroneves, Juan Pablo Montoya, Simon Pagenaud and Tony Kanaan completed the Firestone Fast Six.

Teams will have a 30-minute warm-up tomorrow morning to fine tune the cars for the race, which will be broadcast by ABC-TV starting at 3:30 p.m. ET.